Lexus IS lights up for music video with 41,999 LEDs

By Jez Spinks, 08 Dec 2016Car Style

Lexus has stepped up its LED game. While its commonplace for cars to feature fifty-plus LED’s in their head and tail lights, this IS has gone to a new level

Luxury car makers seem to be in a continual battle of one-upmanship with the number of LEDs on their cars, but it’s going to be hard to beat this Lexus’s 41,999 light-emitting diodes.

The one-off Lexus IS, dubbed the LIT IS, was produced to star in a music video by a UK artist, Dua Lipa.

Lexus’s programmable mobile light show can broadcast graphics and video, and features three modes.

Attract mode runs a loop of psychedelically colourful graphics, Music Viz responds to songs, and Gesture mode allows people to manipulate animations with their hands.

Lexus says the LIT IS produces 175,000 lumens when fully illuminated, which you can interpret as incredibly bright, while the hand-applied LED strips would stretch for half a mile (about 800 metres) if placed end to end.

“A car as visually striking as the LIT IS required an equally dramatic debut,” said Lexus US’s general manager of product and consumer marketing, Brian Bolain. “A music video was a perfect place to launch the LIT IS and working with Dua Lipa allowed the concept to come to life, putting a spotlight on the Lexus IS in an entirely new way.”

The LIT IS is the second leftfield promotion of Lexus’s BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class rival, following its unusual collaboration with the makers of spicy sauce Sriracha for a unique LA motor show model. The IS Sriracha featured a chili-style exterior combining red paint work and green-accented grille, brake calipers, exhaust pipes and side mirrors.